The Only Thing Worth Dying For

by Eric Blehm

  “Yep. We’ll stay as long as we can—then we have to get Hamid out of here.”

  “Mag, grab Ronnie and Mike and clear the crowd out of here!” JD shouted, moving the hand of a teenager playing with the pockets of his go-to-hell pack.

  As the three Green Berets politely but firmly pushed the crowd back from the trucks, they realized that there were more than just a few armed men among them.

  “We got a lot of guys with guns here,” Mag called out.

  “Well, put them to work,” said JD.

  More people arrived—carrying everything from AK-47s to bolt-action rifles that likely predated World War II—and Mag grabbed them by their shirt collars and put them in the defensive line. Ronnie was doing the same, spreading the men out on either side of the trucks, when Mag said to him, “Brother, you’re gonna have to cover me, ’cause I’ve got a jumper at the door.” Ronnie said, “Brother, you can cover me while I cover you.” They ran to the nearest compound door, knocked, and—when there was no answer—Mag said, “Sorry about this,” and kicked the door in. Hurrying to a back corner of the deserted compound, they faced each other and dropped their drawers.

  Meanwhile, Mike watched two Afghans pull a canvas tarp off a rusty Soviet anti-tank weapon, set back between two buildings. To his amazement, it appeared to have been maintained. The parts moved, and another man carried some large rounds out of a nearby shed, loaded up the gun, and cranked it to point toward the labyrinth. Mike gestured at the weapon and gestured around, “Any more like this?” The men shook their heads and held up one finger. This was the extent of the town’s heavy defenses.

  Three or four men showed up with RPGs, and Mag and Ronnie, now back at the trucks, sent them to the rooftops on either side of the main street, pantomiming that they should stay there and fire at anything that came toward them on the road.

  “Texas One Two, we are going to get permission to drop below altitude restriction and commence strafing runs,” radioed one of the pilots.

  This was bad news for ODA 574. Due to the perceived air defense threat from the Taliban, the pilots weren’t allowed to fly at lower altitudes. They were now seeking permission to strafe—the most dangerous method of attacking ground troops—because they had nothing else left and didn’t want to abandon the team and the town until they were completely out of ammunition.

  Suddenly an F-14 swooped toward the center convoy, white smoke erupting from its nose. Its six-barreled Vulcan Gatling-style cannon fired sixty rounds of 20 mm ammunition per second, making a belching sound as it strafed the trucks and depleting in ten seconds all 676 rounds the aircraft carried. A single RPG arced upward from somewhere in the labyrinth and missed the plane by hundreds of yards, coming harmlessly back to earth in the desert to the west. One by one, jets dived down over the labyrinth, firing the last of their ammunition before returning to their ships to refuel and rearm.

  For several minutes, the men watched the smoke from smoldering wrecks in the labyrinth, aware that their enemies were getting closer and they had nothing to throw at them. “We may be in trouble,” Dan said under his breath.

  As if on cue, a second wave of fully armed aircraft checked in. Alex quickly directed them to strike the middle column. After their first run, marked by a rumble of explosions, the pilots radioed some welcome news: “The victors in the middle group are starting to turn around.”

  “Let’s work the western column, then the eastern one,” Amerine said.

  The smaller eastern column had stopped when the strafing began, and the lead vehicles were retreating back through the maze. Alex told the pilots to let them run and focus instead on the larger western column, which was still advancing.

  “You’re cleared hot,” said Alex. “Give them whatever you’ve got.”

  As the 500-pound bombs began to explode on the western column, more fighters announced their arrival to Alex, who was controlling so many aircraft that he had to keep them in a holding pattern high overhead.

  “I got one truck trying to hide in a draw,” radioed a pilot. “…Not anymore.” An explosion echoed across the valley.

  Now under attack, the western convoy pressed forward, some of the trucks breaking away and speeding past the burning wreckage of their cohorts.

  “I see ’em!” shouted Mike, pointing at a truck a mile to the west, the first of the Taliban to have made it through the labyrinth.

  Amerine grabbed JD and whispered in his ear, “Get all the guys close to the trucks.”

  Machine-gun fire erupted at the western edge of town.

  “Can we go over there?” asked Ronnie.

  “No—stay here,” said JD.

  It soon became evident that the gunfire was coming from townsmen shooting at the lone Taliban truck, which abruptly turned around and sped away to the south. Sporadic gunfire persisted in the west, but the team couldn’t see what was happening.

  “The western column is turning around!” said Alex.

  “Let’s get as many as we can before they escape,” said Amerine.

  The aircraft continued their runs, dropping bombs on the retreating trucks. The sky had gone brown, hazy from dust and smoke from the destroyed vehicles. The columns of black smoke reminded the Gulf War veterans—JD, Mag, and Ken—of the burning oil fields in the Kuwaiti desert.

  The rest of the men had seen those same scenes on television and the covers of Time and Newsweek. But this was their war, and ODA 574 had just won its first battle.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Credibility

  * * *

  The giants he sees are nothing but windmills…[but] only a man who sees giants can ever stand upon their shoulders.

  —Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, The Rule of Four

  * * *

  As the aircraft pursued the fleeing convoy down the valley, the now exuberant crowd of locals moved back in closer to the team.

  “Look at that!” Ronnie shouted, pointing into the boisterous throng of Afghans.

  Amerine and Mag clutched their M4s instinctively and spun around, eyes darting.

  “That guy has a nickel-plated AKS,”* Ronnie sputtered. “Brent would love one of those. Let me see how much he wants for it.”

  “You can buy Brent a gun later,” Amerine said with a laugh.

  From the direction of town, a red truck approached, crawled through the mob, and pulled up next to ODA 574. Casper and Charlie were in the backseat of the king cab, being driven by a member of Karzai’s guard.

  “How’s it going?” asked Casper, gazing out at the black smoke in the distance.

  “Convoy is retreating,” said Amerine. “I’m going to push the team out and get ready for a second attack.”

  “I’ll send up a report briefing what your team did—what happened here today,” said Casper.

  Amerine nodded, then turned to Charlie and said, “You were right; we should have taken the keys.”

  Shaking his head with a smile, Charlie said, “I told you so.”

  JD was standing beside Alex at their truck, the Afghans crowding them while Alex listened to reports from the pilots. Walking up, Amerine set his weapon atop the gear piled in the truck bed and removed the light gray Afghan shirt he’d been wearing over his uniform since Haji Badhur’s Cove.

  “They know we’re here now,” Amerine said to JD, who took off his own charcoal-colored top. “We don’t need to bother with these costumes anymore.”

  The rest of the men were stripping back down to their DCUs when a car horn started blaring and the townspeople scrambled off the road to allow an SUV full of armed Afghans to pass. When it hit the open road, it sped up in pursuit of the retreating Taliban.

  “Good for them,” said JD. “Alex, you’d better keep our pilots from bombing him.”

  “I’ll do my best—but if he goes too far forward, there isn’t anything I can do.”

  Five more trucks followed the first. “We need to get down there and see if we can reoccupy the ridgeline,” Amerine said to JD. “We have to assume the
Taliban will be back. We surprised them today. Next time they’ll be smarter.”

  The team loaded into their vehicles while at least thirty more trucks with armed men streamed south out of Tarin Kowt. ODA 574’s two trucks merged with them, hitting a traffic jam where the road entered a gully at the beginning of the labyrinth. They edged forward a hundred yards into the labyrinth and could see smoke rising ahead. “They almost made it to Tarin Kowt,” Amerine said to Wes, pointing at the remains of a Taliban truck.

  The truck bed was gone and the cab torn in half, a smoldering body slumped over the steering wheel. Body parts and charred clothing were scattered on the ground. A Taliban soldier—his intestines spilling from his abdomen—lay moaning in the ditch beside the road.

  While the locals offered the man water, Amerine looked down at him from the passenger seat of the lead truck, feeling no remorse or pity, just a cold triumph. In the second truck, Mike and Mag felt the same: This dying Taliban who had been on his way to murder innocent civilians now represented little more than the cause of this traffic jam.

  They got moving again, just to hit another jam as friendly trucks attempted to maneuver around more wreckage blocking the road. In fifteen minutes, they’d traveled only a quarter of a mile into the labyrinth. Ken, who was sitting in the bed of Amerine’s truck, suddenly shouted when they slowed to a stop at another bottleneck.

  Amerine stuck his head out the window. “What?”

  “You’re going to get us killed if we keep going!” Ken yelled. “There are cluster bombs* all over the road!”

  “We didn’t drop any cluster bombs,” Amerine snapped, swinging open the cab door. He had never seen a Green Beret lose his cool this way, and he approached his medic with a mixture of anger and disbelief.

  In the same truck as Amerine and Ken, Wes, who respected both men, felt like a kid listening to his parents bicker. From the truck behind, Mag and JD watched Amerine step toward the rear of the truck and get in Ken’s face.

  “Looks like the captain is about to go at it with Ken,” said Mag, “This is not the time or place for this bullshit. We gotta roll!”

  “I’m on it,” JD said. He jumped out and ran forward. “Get in my fucking truck, Sergeant,” he ordered, and Ken hopped from the truck’s bed and walked to the other vehicle, shaking his head.

  “What’s going on?” JD asked Amerine.

  “Ken is losing it. Says we’re all gonna get killed if we push forward.”

  The dirt road ahead of them was congested with trucks from Tarin Kowt. Armed townsmen were creeping up embankments, searching for surviving Taliban.

  “Looks like it might get nasty,” said JD. “I don’t think we should push forward with a scared medic and all these townsfolk confusing things. Why don’t we let them do the initial sweep, and we’ll get a translator and some guerrillas to clean up tomorrow. We can lay up somewhere around here tonight.”

  “Let’s pull up onto that ridge and set up an observation post,” said Amerine. “That will give us a decent perspective of the approach from the pass.” With a nod, JD returned to his vehicle. The two trucks drove off the road heading east and climbed the highest ridge, about a mile and a half into the labyrinth. Though ODA 574 had an unobstructed view back to Tarin Kowt, their view to the south, where the Taliban had entered the valley through Tarin Kowt Pass, was limited by the rolling hills. With Alex monitoring hourly recon flights, however, this would do as an observation post for the night.

  While Mike, Ronnie, and Mag took up positions at the three points of a triangular perimeter with the trucks at the center, JD and Amerine sat down away from the rest of the team to discuss Ken.

  “We can try to have him medevaced,” Amerine said.

  “Do you want to risk an aircrew to get him out of here?”

  Amerine shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

  “It could be PTSD,” said JD. “I heard him tell a story once about helping a Saudi unit that was hit by friendly fire in the Gulf War.”

  “They were hit by cluster bombs?”

  “Yeah,” said JD. “Let me talk to him. You stay out of it for now. I’ll keep him close to me. Any of this shit happens again, we’ll send him home.”

  “That means you would have to double as team sergeant and team medic.”

  “It’s okay,” JD said, smiling. “I’m a damn good medic.”

  “We’ll be fine here for tonight, but I want to push out to our original observation post, with the view of Tarin Kowt Pass, tomorrow. I’m going to grab Mike and Wes and ride into town to talk to Hamid about getting us some men.”

  Back in Tarin Kowt, the streets were packed with pedestrians, many waving Afghan flags in lieu of the white flags of the Taliban. Shops were open. An old man stood in the center of an intersection wearing a tattered police uniform, directing traffic with a whistle and animated hand signals. Parked vehicles lined the streets outside Karzai’s headquarters when Amerine, Mike, and Wes pulled up; inside the compound courtyard were groups of Afghan men, all in conversation, their voices echoing off the walls.

  A very tall teenager, dressed in a bright aqua robe, greeted the Americans. “I am Seylaab,” he said, carefully and loudly enunciating each word. “You want to see Hamid Karzai?”

  “Yes,” said Amerine. “Are you our translator?”

  “No, I am Mr. Karzai’s assistant. Rahim will translate for you. He is a pharmacist from this town. You will meet him later.”

  Leaving Wes and Mike near the entrance, Amerine followed Seylaab across the courtyard, ascended two concrete steps, and entered the compound’s “guest room”—the room designated in Afghan homes where visitors are received by the head of the house, take their meals, and sleep.* Karzai was sitting on the floor in a large circle of cross-legged tribal leaders. He motioned toward Amerine, and the man next to Karzai gave up his seat.

  Another Afghan served Amerine tea.

  “Do you want sweets?” asked Karzai.

  “Please,” said Amerine, taking nuts and raisins from a tray. “Have you been out on the streets? It’s very crowded. There’s even a police officer directing traffic.”

  “Ah,” said Karzai. “There is a story behind that man. He is one of many who have been released from the prison where he was held by the Taliban for years. I was told that he went home, saw his family, put on his old uniform, and wanted to go back to work. Nobody is paying him.”

  “The crowds and traffic are from all around the area,” he continued. “The local mullahs from Tarin Kowt, some from Deh Rawood, even one from Helmand, came to visit me this afternoon. I thought they might be angry about the fight, maybe angry that all of you are here. Instead, they thanked me for bringing you—the ones from Tarin Kowt said they would be dead if you had not come.”

  Amerine looked around the room. “Are any of these men mullahs?”

  “No, they have already departed,” said Karzai. “These are local tribal leaders.”

  “Are they bringing men?”

  “Oh, yes. After today we will have no problems.”

  “That is good news,” said Amerine. “Tonight I’ll keep my team south of town to watch for the Taliban. Have you heard anything about their intentions?”

  “Not yet. I think it is good that you keep watch.”

  “I still need men. I need them right now. My eight men aren’t very secure where I have them.”

  “Bari Gul is coming tonight or tomorrow morning with his men,” Karzai said. “I will send him directly to you.”

  “Seylaab says you have a translator for me?” said Amerine.

  “Yes. I will send Rahim with Bari Gul.”

  Amerine remained in the circle and listened, through Karzai’s translation, while the Afghans discussed the anticipated arrival of tribal fighters and how they would be fed and quartered in Tarin Kowt. As much as Amerine needed guerrillas, the most important aspect of this meeting was the simple act of sitting and listening to the tribal leaders. If he was going to take their men into battle, they had
to be as comfortable with him as they were with Karzai.

  “They are concerned about more attacks from the Taliban in retribution for joining our rebellion,” Karzai told Amerine. “There are villages across Uruzgan that will follow Tarin Kowt and denounce the Taliban, but they fear reprisals. Can we get them more weapons?”

  “Yes. I will work on getting more weapons dropped in Tarin Kowt,” replied Amerine. “You should put the word out that they’ll arrive here in the next day or two.”

  “Good. That will help.”

  “Have there been any other reprisals by the Taliban in Uruzgan?”

  “Not yet,” said Karzai. “But they will come.”

  After an hour, Amerine excused himself to meet with Casper at the compound on the other side of the street that he had procured for his CIA team and ODA 574. Casper escorted Amerine to a large team room across the courtyard from the CIA. Karzai had a small room between them that he could use for sleeping or as a refuge from the constant flow of visitors.

  “We have a helicopter arriving tonight with our three men,” said Casper, referring to one of his spooks and to Victor and Brent, ODA 574’s engineer and junior weapons sergeant.

  “That’s good to hear,” said Amerine. “Can you drive them out to me tomorrow morning? It would be better not to move anyone tonight.”

  “Worried we might get lost in the dark?”

  Amerine laughed.

  Early that evening at the observation post, Alex sat in the soft glow of his laptop on the tailgate of the truck, explaining to Amerine and JD the method he had developed to recon the three major avenues of approach from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt, which he designated on the computer map with red, green, and blue lines.

  “I’ll get us recon flights down these roads every three hours,” he said. “That should give us more than enough time to spot convoys.”

  Amerine relayed to the men that they were going to bottle up Kandahar by preventing the Taliban from sending convoys north out of the city and into Uruzgan. This would serve two purposes: it would protect the villages that defected to Karzai and it would undo the Taliban grip on the province.